Langley Escapes Nasa Shuffle

Proposal Targets Space-related Work

A NASA plan that recommends possibly closing the NASA-Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore has triggered an effort by its backers to lobby congressmen, senators and even President Clinton.

But the plan's recommendations barely affect NASA-Langley Research Center in Hampton.

The three-page NASA document lists ways to streamline operations within the space agency. Many of its recommendations involve moving space-related work to the Johnson Space Center in Texas and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

``It's just a study, and it's all preliminary,'' said Sidney F. Pauls, associate director at Langley, ``but we appear to come out of this relatively unscathed.''

That's because most of Langley's research involves aeronautics, not space-related work.

The plan recommends that Langley drop its micro-gravity and planetary physics work, some of which involves studying how astronauts en route to Mars would respond to radiation exposure. Pauls said implementing this recommendation would affect about 10 workers, all of whom would be reassigned at Langley.

Published reports that the plan orders Langley to cease all of its space-related work are not true, Pauls said. ``We don't know where that came from,'' he said.

He said Langley officials are not surprised by the plan's Langley-related recommendations because a similar report released in 1990 included identical recommendations.

As for Wallops, Pauls said NASA officials want to conduct an economic feasibility study to determine whether to keep it open.

Wallops, where 1,160 people work, is one of three rocket-launching stations in the continental United States.

There is one at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and another at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Under the plan, Wallops' work would go to Kennedy. But officials at Wallops say moving the rockets would be expensive and that conducting rocket-launching work at Kennedy would disrupt ongoing work there.

Officials in Accomack County, where Wallops is located, plan to write Virginia's congressmen and senators, urging them to lobby NASA officials to spare Wallops, said county Administrator Art Fisher.

Fisher said the general manager of the Tyson chicken processing plant in Accomack plans to enlist help from Don Tyson, chief executive officer of Tyson Foods and a friend of President Clinton's.

``We're doing everything we can think of right now,'' he said.

LANGLEY IMPACT

A NASA plan that recommends possibly closing the NASA-Wallops Flight Facility will barely affect Hampton's NASA-Langley Research Center, said associate director Sidney F. Pauls. He said implementing the plan would affect about 10 workers, all of whom would be reassigned at Langley.